UpdateBeijing film festival shut down after organisers threatened with power cuts, surveillance
Authorities backtrack on last-minute change of plans to allow festival to push through in nearby Hebei province instead
Chinese authorities blocked an annual independent film festival from opening Saturday, seizing documents and films from organisers and hauling away two event officials in a sign that Beijing is stepping up its already tight ideological controls.
Li Xianting, a film critic and founder of the Li Xianting Film Fund, the organiser of the Beijing Independent Film Festival, said police searched his office and confiscated materials he had gathered over more than 10 years. Li and the festival’s artistic director, Wang Hongwei, were detained by police Saturday night but later released, according to their supporters.
The festival, which began in 2006, has seen severe police obstruction over the past few years, but this year’s crackdown is far more serious, Wang said.
“In the past few years, when they forced us to cancel the festival, we just moved it to other places, or delayed the screenings,” he said. “But this year, we cannot carry on with the festival. It is completely forbidden.”
Over the past week, Li posted memos saying government security personnel were pressuring him to cancel the festival, and that he had come under police surveillance.
“It’s very clear that the (President) Xi Jinping regime is determined to control the ideological realm, which has not been emphasised so much for a long time,” said Chris Berry, professor of film studies at King’s College London in England.